


Ready Player One: Reloaded

by CH1M3RA



Category: Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
Genre: But a lot of new stuff too, Canon Rewrite, Features some bits from the actual book, Fix-It, Wade is a gay disaster, aka I write the book I wanted to read, and so is everyone else tbh, basically the book but if it wasn't completely terrible
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 21:46:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14923395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CH1M3RA/pseuds/CH1M3RA
Summary: The future sucks. That's just a fact. The only way to real with the depressing, horrible reality is to escape to another one: the expansive virtual universe of the OASIS.But the future of the OASIS is in jeopardy-- and unfortunately, it may be up to Wade Watts to save it. All he has to do is win a contest he wants nothing to do with.(aka a massive fix-it rewrite of Ready Player One that tries to make a problematic book somewhat better)





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Ready Player One, or any associated characters and ideas. This work was inspired by Ernest Cline's novel and features direct excerpts and quotations from the book. These are his characters and ideas. All I've done is remix and recreate what already exists (you know, kinda like what Ernie did with RP1 ;) )

_“What is society without a heroic dimension?" -_ Jean Baudrillard

  


When you’re a kid, you always think that when you grow up you’re going to change the world. That one day you’re going to do something so _amazingly awesome_ that for once in your life everyone will stop and look at _you_. Some kids want to be astronauts or princesses or the president or a cowboy. Something impossible and incredible and exciting. Regardless of what you wanted to be, that underlying dream was still there- one day, you would be undeniably and outstandingly special.

Now, the shit truth is that most of humanity is going to end up in the garbage heap of history. Most of us aren’t special. Whatever skills we have, there’s always going to be someone that’s better. Whatever we think of, someone else probably thought of it first. The best we can honestly hope for is to just make a mark on a few people’s lives, and be good with that. The truth is that about 99% of the people on Planet Earth are going to be born, live, and die while the rest of the world goes on around them, barely doing anything extraordinary, notable, or important.

James Halliday was not 99% of people.

In fact, this overachieving asshole managed to change the world not once, but twice.

The first time was when he created OASIS. Back when he was just a video game designer, Halliday had pioneered a massively multiplayer game constructed entirely in virtual reality- the same game that had gradually evolved into the globally networked virtual reality most of the planet now used on a daily basis. And as one might imagine, this made Halliday rich. Very, very rich.

When Halliday died, it could have been like any other billionaire's death. There could have been a five minute segment on the news about him that night, people would feel sad and leave comments remembering the things he did, a few days later all the other billionaires would turn up for his funeral, and by a week later everyone would have moved on. All his piles of money would be divvied up for his respective heirs to fight over and no more would be heard about it, unless there was a particularly juicy murder involved or something to that effect.

But as chance would have it, Halliday had no heirs. He had died a sixty-seven-year-old bachelor, with no living relatives and, by most accounts, without a single friend. He’d spent the last fifteen years of his life in self-imposed isolation, during which time — if the rumors were to be believed — he’d gone completely insane.

Because another thing about James Halliday? The man was the very definition of _extra_. He had no plans to “go gentle into that good night.” Instead, he had to change the world. Again.

 

_Anorak’s Invitation_ was not a long video, clocking in at just over five minutes. It wasn’t even particularly detailed, as far as last testaments go. But it needed be neither long or contain excessive amounts of details to get Halliday’s message across.

In a short film packed to the brim with references to the 1980s that Halliday had sent to every single user of OASIS at the time of his death, he announced that was placing his entire estate, including a controlling share of stock in his company, Gregarious Simulation Systems, in escrow until such time as a single condition he had set forth in his will was met. The first individual to meet that condition would inherit his entire fortune, currently valued in excess of two hundred and forty billion dollars. Somewhere in OASIS, Halliday had hidden clues. Easter eggs. If you wanted the money, all you would have to do was follow the clues, and finish Halliday’s treasure hunt before every other person on the planet.

The Hunt, as it was later dubbed, captivated the planet with an ungodly fervor. Who wouldn’t want to be a multi-billionaire, in a world like this? Like winning the lottery, finding Halliday’s Easter egg became a popular fantasy among adults and children alike. It was a game anyone could play, and at first, there seemed to be no right or wrong way to play it.

At the end of the video, Halliday included a link to his personal website, which had changed drastically on the morning of his death. For over a decade, the only thing posted there had been a short looping animation that showed his avatar, Anorak, sitting in a medieval library, hunched over a scarred worktable, mixing potions and poring over dusty spellbooks, with a large painting of a black dragon visible on the wall behind him.

But now that animation was gone, and in its place there was a high-score list like those that used to appear in old coin-operated video games. The list had ten numbered spots, and each displayed the initials JDH — James Donovan Halliday — followed by a score of six zeros. This high-score list quickly came to be known as “the Scoreboard”.

Just below the Scoreboard was an icon that looked like a small leather-bound book, which linked to a free downloadable copy of _Anorak’s Almanac_ , a collection of hundreds of Halliday’s undated journal entries. The _Almanac_ was over a thousand pages long, but it contained few details about Halliday’s personal life or his day-to-day activities. Most of the entries were his stream-of-consciousness observations on various classic videogames, science-fiction and fantasy novels, movies, comic books, and ’80s pop culture, mixed with his denunciation of everything from organized religion to diet soda.

The only thing _Anorak’s Almanac_ seemed to indicate was that a familiarity with Halliday’s various obsessions would be essential to finding the egg, thus leading to an inevitable but disconcerting global fascination with 1980s pop culture. By 2041, spiked hair and acid-washed jeans were back in style, and covers of hit ’80s pop songs by contemporary bands dominated the music charts.

A new subculture was born, composed of the millions of people who now devoted every free moment of their lives to searching for Halliday’s egg. At first, these individuals were known simply as “egg hunters”, but this was quickly truncated to the nickname “gunters”. During the first year of the Hunt, being a gunter was highly fashionable, and nearly every OASIS user claimed to be one.

When the first anniversary of Halliday’s death arrived, the fervor surrounding the contest began to die down. An entire year had passed and no one had found anything. Despite all of the “professional gunters” who boasted on their blogs that they were getting closer to a breakthrough every day, the truth gradually became apparent: No one really even knew exactly what it was they were looking for, or where to start looking for it.

Another year passed.

And another.

Still nothing.

Halliday’s Easter Egg faded into urban legend- people began to assume it was all just an outlandish hoax perpetrated by a rich nut job. Others believed that even if the egg really did exist, no one was ever going to find it. And maybe that would have been the case. Maybe the Hunt would have drifted into obscurity, and the mystical fortune and total control of OASIS that came with it would have been forever unobtainable.

But this was James Halliday. And James Halliday would not be forgotten.


	2. SIMULACRA-0001

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Ready Player One, or any associated characters or ideas.

**I. SIMULACRA**

_ “The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth – it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.” - _ Jean Baudrillard

 

I was jolted awake by the sound of gunfire in one of the neighboring stacks. The shots were followed by a few minutes of muffled shouting and screaming, then silence.

Gunfire wasn’t uncommon in the stacks, but it still shook me up. A lot of people owned guns around here, claiming ‘personal safety’- a valid concern, but more often than not the guns just ended up being used to shoot anyone who you thought was looking at you the wrong way. Such is life in the stacks. 

I knew I should try to go back to sleep, but that wasn’t an easy task. I was curled up in an old sleeping bag in the corner of the trailer’s tiny laundry room, wedged into the gap between the wall and the dryer. I wasn’t welcome in my aunt’s room across the hall, which was fine by me. I preferred to crash in the laundry room anyway. It was warm, it afforded me a limited amount of privacy, and the wireless reception wasn’t too bad. And, as an added bonus, the room smelled like liquid detergent and fabric softener. The rest of the trailer reeked of cat piss and abject poverty. 

Most of the time I slept in my hideout. But the temperature had dropped below zero the past few nights, and as much as I hated staying at my aunt’s place, it still beat freezing to death.

A total of fifteen people lived in my aunt’s trailer. She slept in the smallest of its three bedrooms. The Depperts lived in the bedroom adjacent to hers, and the Millers occupied the large master bedroom at the end of the hall. There were six of them, and they paid the largest share of the rent. Our trailer wasn’t as crowded as some of the other units in the stacks. It was a double-wide. Plenty of room for everybody.

I pulled out my laptop and powered it on. It was a bulky, heavy beast, almost ten years old. I’d found it in a trash bin behind the abandoned strip mall across the highway. I’d been able to coax it back to life by replacing its system memory and reloading the stone-age operating system. The processor was slower than a sloth by current standards, but it was fine for my needs. The laptop served as my portable research library, video arcade, and home theater system. It's hard drive was filled with old books, movies, TV show episodes, song files, and nearly every video game made in the twentieth century.

Normally when I couldn’t sleep, which was more often than not, I’d try to play one of the old games stored on my computer. I’ve slowly been working on playing more of them, not just the ones I like or am good at. Aech tells me it’s important for a gunter to know how to play anything, just in case in comes up in the Hunt. Mostly, I just practice so I can keep up with him. 

Tonight, however, I was feeling in a bit of a maudlin mood, so I pulled up something special. 

_ Anorak’s Invitation _ opens with the sound of trumpets, the intro to a song called ‘Dead Man’s Party.’ Slightly arrogant and self-important, but also somehow fitting. That was James Halliday to a T. 

The song plays over a dark screen for the first few seconds, until the trumpets are joined by a guitar, and that’s when Halliday appears. But he’s not a sixty-seven-year-old man, ravaged by time and illness. He looks just as he did on the cover of Time magazine back in 2014, a tall, thin, healthy man in his early forties, with unkempt hair and his trademark horn-rimmed eyeglasses. He’s also wearing the same clothing he wore in the Time cover photo: faded jeans and a vintage Space Invaders T-shirt. 

I always pause the video here. Halliday fills the screen, dancing-- something no one ever saw him do in real life. When I was younger, I loved to look at this image because he just looked so  _ happy _ . 

Around here, happiness has always very much been in short supply. I was the only child of two teenagers, both refugees who’d met in the stacks where I’d grown up. I don’t remember my father. When I was just a few months old, he was shot dead while looting a grocery store during a power blackout. The only thing I really knew about him was that he loved comic books. My mom once told me that my dad had given me an alliterative name, Wade Watts, because he thought it made me sound like I had the secret identity of a superhero. 

I thought it made me sound like an idiot. 

My mother, Loretta, had raised me on her own. We’d lived in a small RV in another part of the stacks. She had two full-time OASIS jobs, one as a telemarketer, the other as an escort in an online brothel. She used to make me wear earplugs at night so I wouldn’t hear her in the next room, talking dirty to tricks in other time zones. But the earplugs didn’t work very well, so I would watch old movies instead, with the volume turned way up.

I was introduced to the OASIS at an early age, because my mother used it as a virtual babysitter. As soon as I was old enough to wear a visor and a pair of haptic gloves, my mom helped me create my first OASIS avatar. Then she stuck me in a corner and went back to work, leaving me to explore an entirely new world, very different from the one I’d known up until then. Halliday’s world. 

Once I was a little older, I’d always pause  _ Anorak’s Invitation _ on Halliday because he was the object of my first major and all consuming crush. He was my idol- the nerd who rose from nothing to be the smartest and richest man in the world, and created an entirely new reality for us all to live in. Just like the rest of the world, I adored him. And he looked very good in horn-rimmed glasses. 

For a long time, Halliday and the Hunt for his Egg were one of the few good things in my life. Ever since my mother shoved me into OASIS the first time, I was more or less raised by the free interactive educational programs. Once I’d learned to read and write and all that, it didn’t take me long to discover that the OASIS was also the world’s biggest public library, where even a penniless kid like me had access to every book ever written, every song ever recorded, and every movie, television show, video game, and piece of artwork ever created. But gaining access to all of that information turned out to be something of a mixed blessing. Because that was when I found out the truth.

For me, growing up as a human being on the planet Earth in the twenty-first century was a real kick in the teeth. Existentially speaking.

I wish someone had just told me the truth right up front, as soon as I was old enough to understand it. I wish someone had just said:

_ Here’s the deal, Wade. You’re something called a ‘human being.’ That’s a really smart kind of animal. Like every other animal on this planet, we’re descended from a single-celled organism that lived millions of years ago. This happened by a process called evolution, and you’ll learn more about it later. You’re probably wondering what happened before you got here. An awful lot of stuff, actually. Once we evolved into humans, things got pretty interesting. We figured out how to grow food and domesticate animals so we didn’t have to spend all of our time hunting. Our tribes got much bigger, and we spread across the entire planet like an unstoppable virus. Then, after fighting a bunch of wars with each other over land, resources, and our made-up gods, we eventually got all of our tribes organized into a ‘global civilization.’ But, honestly, it wasn’t all that organized, or civilized, and we continued to fight a lot of wars with each other. But we also figured out how to do science, which helped us develop technology. For a bunch of hairless apes, we’ve actually managed to invent some pretty incredible things. Computers. Medicine. Lasers. Microwave ovens. Artificial hearts. Atomic bombs. We even sent a few guys to the moon and brought them back. We also created a global communications network that lets us all talk to each other, all around the world, all the time. Pretty impressive, right? _

_ But that’s where the bad news comes in. Our global civilization came at a huge cost. We needed a whole bunch of energy to build it, and we got that energy by burning fossil fuels, which came from dead plants and animals buried deep in the ground. We used up most of this fuel before you got here, and now it’s pretty much all gone. This means that we no longer have enough energy to keep our civilization running like it was before. So we’ve had to cut back. Big-time. We call this the Global Energy Crisis, and it’s been going on for a while now.  _

_ Also, it turns out that burning all of those fossil fuels had some nasty side effects, like raising the temperature of our planet and screwing up the environment. So now the polar ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, and the weather is all messed up. Plants and animals are dying off in record numbers, and lots of people are starving and homeless. And we’re still fighting wars with each other, mostly over the few resources we have left. _

_ Basically, what this all means is that life is a lot tougher than it used to be, in the Good Old Days, back before you were born. To be honest, the future doesn’t look too bright. You were born at a pretty crappy time in history. And it looks like things are only gonna get worse from here on out. Human civilization is in ‘decline.’ Some people even say it’s ‘collapsing.’ _

_ You’re probably wondering what’s going to happen to you. That’s easy. The same thing is going to happen to you that has happened to every other human being who has ever lived. You’re going to die. We all die. That’s just how it is. _

_ What happens when you die? Well, we’re not completely sure. But the evidence seems to suggest that nothing happens. You’re just dead, your brain stops working, and then you’re not around to ask annoying questions anymore. So now you have to live the rest of your life knowing you’re going to die someday and disappear forever. _

_ Sorry. _

  
  


When I would finally work up the guts to press play on  _ Anorak’s Invitation _ again, I was always jarred when the lyrics of the song finally kicked in.  After staring at a still image for a while and being only alone with my thoughts, the sudden advent of another person’s voice always seemed too loud. Eventually, Halliday begins to lip-synch along, still gyrating:  _ All dressed up with nowhere to go. Walking with a dead man over my shoulder. Don’t run away, it’s only me.... _

He abruptly stops dancing and makes a cutting motion with his right hand, silencing the music. Halliday now stands at the front of a funeral parlor, next to an open casket. A second, much older Halliday lies inside the casket, his body emaciated and ravaged by cancer. Shiny quarters cover each of his eyelids. The younger Halliday gazes down at the corpse of his older self with mock sadness, then turns to address the assembled mourners. He snaps his fingers and a scroll appears in his right hand. Opening it with a flourish,  it unfurls to the floor, unraveling down the aisle in front of him. He breaks the fourth wall, addressing the viewer, and begins to read.

_ “I, James Donovan Halliday, being of sound mind and disposing memory, do hereby make, publish, and declare this instrument to be my last will and testament, hereby revoking any and all wills and codicils by me at any time heretofore made....”  _ He continues reading, faster and faster, plowing through several more paragraphs of legalese, until he’s speaking so rapidly that the words are unintelligible. Then he stops abruptly. 

“Forget it”, he says. “Even at that speed, it would take me a month to read the whole thing. Sad to say, I don’t have that kind of time.” He drops the scroll and it vanishes in a shower of gold dust.

Once I was older, wiser, and quite a bit sadder, I’d pause the video here too. The vanishing golden dust always reminded my of my mother. I never blamed her for the way things were. She was a victim of fate and cruel circumstance, like everyone else. Her generation had it the hardest. She’d been born into a world of plenty, then had to watch it all slowly vanish. More than anything, I remember feeling sorry for her. She was depressed all the time, and taking drugs seemed to be the only thing she truly enjoyed. Of course, they were what eventually killed her. When I was eleven years old, she shot a bad batch of something into her arm and died on our ratty fold-out sofa bed while listening to music on an old mp3 player I’d repaired and given to her the previous Christmas.

That was when I had to move in with my mom’s sister, Alice. Aunt Alice didn’t take me in out of kindness or familial responsibility. She did it to get the extra food vouchers from the government every month. Most of the time, I had to find food on my own. This usually wasn’t a problem, because I had a talent for finding and fixing old computers and busted OASIS consoles, which I sold to pawnshops or traded for food vouchers. I earned enough to keep from going hungry, which was more than a lot of my neighbors could say.

The year after my mom died I spent a lot of time wallowing in self-pity over my own miserable state, but of course, that didn’t help. I might have been going through my teen-angst phase as an orphan living in a somewhat dystopian nightmare, but I had food (sometimes). I had a roof over my head. My life wasn’t that bad. At least, that’s what I told myself so I could go to sleep at night.

“If there’s one thing we can never have enough of,” Halliday continues, brushing gold dust off his sleeves, “it’s time. There is never the time to do everything or see everything or experience everything we want. That, of course, is one of the main goals behind OASIS: to let one experience with their senses an experience that previously was only limited to the imagination. With OASIS,” he says, pausing for effect, “all is possible.” Halliday steps to the side and the scene changes, this time to reveal a huge vault door, emblazoned with the logo of his company, Gregarious Simulation Systems. 

“In my life, I have done a great many things,” Halliday says. “And as you are probably well aware, these things have made me a great deal of money. But,” he comments with a sly grin, “there are some things you can’t take with you, right?” He taps on the door and it swings open, revealing huge stacks of gold bars, piled all the way to the ceiling. Halliday smirks and leans back against the nearest stack, the camera pulling in close on his face in a zoom that I always found jarring. 

“So,” he says, clapping his hands together, “I bet all you folks are wondering what all this is, and if you can get your hands on any of this sweet, sweet dough. Well, hold up there, because I’m getting to that.” 

The world tilts and the vault disappears, morphing into a messy living room with burnt orange carpeting, wood-paneled walls, and kitschy late-’70s decor; the room packed with old magazines strewn about and random knicknacks cluttering most of the available surfaces. The only area of the room that’s remotely clear is the space directly in front of the television, an ancient 21-inch model. Hooked up to the television is a dusty but clearly beloved gaming console, and sitting crosslegged on the floor holding the joystick is a small boy, dressed neatly in corduroys and a faded t-shirt but with hair that looks like he’s just walked through a windstorm. 

“The Atari 2600,” Halliday’s voice says from behind the viewer, as he walked into frame. “This was the first videogame system I ever owned,” he remarks fondly. “This is me, just after I got it for Christmas in 1979. It was love at first sight.” 

He walks over and sits down next to the small boy, who is still engrossed in his game.

“My favorite game was this one,” he says, nodding at the TV screen, where a small square is traveling through a series of simple mazes. “It was called Adventure. Like many early videogames, Adventure was designed and programmed by just one person. But back then, Atari refused to give its programmers credit for their work, so the name of a game’s creator didn’t actually appear anywhere on the packaging.” On the screen, young Halliday slays a red dragon, although with the low-res graphics it’s hard to actually tell what anything is supposed to be. 

“So the guy who created Adventure, a man named Warren Robinett, decided to hide his name inside the game itself,” Halliday continues to explain. “He hid a key in one of the game’s labyrinths. If you found this key, a small pixel-sized gray dot, you could use it to enter a secret room where Robinett had hidden his name.” Young Halliday guides his square protagonist into the game’s secret room, where the words CREATED BY WARREN ROBINETT appear in the center of the screen.

“This”, the adult Halliday says, pointing to the screen with genuine reverence, “was the very first videogame Easter egg. Robinett hid it in his game’s code without telling a soul, and Atari manufactured and shipped Adventure all over the world without knowing about the secret room. They didn’t find out about the Easter egg’s existence until a few months later, when kids all over the world began to discover it. I was one of those kids, and finding Robinett’s Easter egg for the first time was one of the coolest videogaming experiences of my life.”

Halliday stands, and the living room faded away, transitioning into a dimly lit cavern, complete with the sounds of bats flying overhead and water dripping distantly. At the same time, Halliday’s appearance changes, morphing into his iconic OASIS avatar, Anorak-- a tall, robed wizard with a slightly more handsome version of the adult Halliday’s face (minus the eyeglasses). Anorak was dressed in his trademark black robes, with his avatar’s emblem (a large calligraphic letter ‘A’) embroidered on each sleeve.

“When the doctors gave me my diagnosis,” Anorak says, speaking in a much deeper voice, “I knew I had finally run out of time, and that I was no longer going to be able to do everything I dreamed about. But I didn’t want my hopes and goals to die with me. So I created my own Easter Egg, and hid it in my most popular creation- the OASIS.”

He grins and the cavern lights up, a holographic overlay showing a map of the OASIS flickering to life.

“The first person to find my Easter Egg will inherit a controlling share of stock in my company and my entire fortune, currently valued in excess of two hundred and forty billion dollars.”

He pauses for effect, although after that bombshell, it isn’t really necessary. 

“But be warned- the Egg is well hidden. Perhaps even too well hidden. Part of me even worries that it may never be found. I never got to playtest this particular game,” he chuckles, although humorlessly. 

“However, I’ve left a few clues around to get everyone started. And here’s the first one.” Anorak makes a grand gesture with his right hand, and three keys appear, spinning slowly in the air in front of him. They appear to be made of copper, jade, and clear crystal. As the keys continue to spin, Anorak recites a piece of verse, and as he speaks each line, it appears briefly in flaming subtitles across the bottom of screen:

_ Three hidden keys open three secret gates _

_ Wherein the errant will be tested for worthy traits _

_ And those with the skill to survive these straits _

_ Will reach The End where the prize awaits _

As he finishes, the jade and crystal keys vanish, leaving only the copper key, which floats gently into his outstretched palm. 

“This won’t be easy, but I have confidence that there are those among you that are worthy of my prize. And who knows,” he says with a twinkle in his eye, as he morphs back into his normal, forty-year-old appearance. “Help may come to those who least expect it.”

He smiles and steps back, arms outstretched as gold coins and glittering jewels begin to fall from the sky and fill the cavern.

“So, without further ado,” he announces, “Let the hunt for Halliday’s Easter Egg begin!” Then he vanishes in a flash of light, and the screen fades to black. 


End file.
